Sacrifices
by Diabolus-in-Harmonia
Summary: [AU] Ghetsis survives the partial success of Lysandre's ambitions on a fortuitous technicality. When Team Flare begins to see the glaring flaws in the society they've realised, who is else left to try and fix the damage they have done?
1. Prologue

Little typically happened during these little days off.

Ghetsis had the freedom to explore out of his seldom-disturbed monitor room, but he rarely took the opportunity. He was content to watch very little unfold across the screens in front of him, idly wondering how late most of his grunts would be in returning to the frigate. A flash of light caught his eye. Mildly unusual, but nothing of note.

He was quick to immerse himself in his thoughts again, pondering the logistics of the attack on Opelucid city. No matter how meticulous his planning, Ghetsis now knew personally that nothing short of expecting the unexpected would suffice—

Another flash. And another.

Scarlet eyes focused on one screen, only to find the flashes spreading across the network of monitors. Mundane explanations were quick to pass through his mind – technical faults, sabotage, his own deteriorating sanity – and dismissed even faster as the first monitor went out.

Static.

His eyes widened as the static spread as the flashes had, and in moments he was sat before a mass of grey screens, the hiss of white noise filling the room. He took a moment to habitually mask his dread, before grasping his cane and rising to his feet. Ghetsis had his suspicions…suspicions so unthinkable he put them out of his mind as he moved to investigate.

His view from the deck shifted his suspicions from fanciful fiction right into the realm of reality.

Ghetsis tried to hide the tremor in his hands as he procured his holocaster from within his robes, though he was confident no-one could see him. He drank in more of the scene before him as it rang, fully expecting the other man not to answer considering the circumstances.

"Allô?" Probably the first time Ghetsis had heard Lysandre so earnestly baffled. It would have been endearing and amusing in any other scenario.

"What have you done?" Ghetsis asked, voice steady and nonchalant. A simple question, with a simple answer the two of them were fully aware of.

So very simple that Lysandre didn't deem it worthy of answering; or in the more likely case, couldn't bring himself to state out loud so soon after the fact.

"I see," Ghetsis confirmed anyway, as if the other man had spoken. He ended the call, took a moment to calm himself(anger was warring with disbelief and disappointment and betrayal and goodness knows what else), and headed to the frigate's cockpit.

Almost as an afterthought, he placed his hand over the oldest pokéball within his robes, and was immensely relieved to feel it respond to him.

Lysandre may well survive his wrath, in that case.


	2. Chapter 1

Some could say that freezing alive the Flare grunts that so much as stood near the path of his ship was unnecessary.

It could even be argued that the act was entirely counter-productive, given that it was depleting the thankfully-still-living Kyurem's limited reserves of energy _and _wiping out some of the presumably few remaining inhabitants of the planet.

Sadly, Ghetsis wasn't particularly inclined to care in his current mindset, brimming with cold fury for these gormless buffoons as he was. Lysandre should be thanking them, he thought – each frozen grunt had eased his anger somewhat, and by the time he deemed himself close enough to the 'hidden' entrance to stop, he felt slightly less like tearing his throat out.

* * *

Fearing the threat of disembowelment by vicious dragon, a kindly admin had revealed Lysandre to be waiting in his chambers. Thanking him and returning his useful companion to his pokéball, Ghetsis soon found himself politely knocking on Lysandre's door, unwilling to give away the urgency of the situation before he'd analysed the exact levels of regret the madman may or may not be experiencing.

"Entrer."

Ghetsis did as he was told, tightly controlling his temper as Lysandre's indifferent face came into view. He so hoped he'd be able to get through this conversation without impulsively murdering him.

"S'asseoir," Lysandre said, a smile on his lips as he gestured to the luxurious red seat opposite him.

"No thank you. I do not plan to make this a long visit," Ghetsis responded, returning the false smile. He spoke French far better than Lysandre spoke English, but he refused to allow the bastard to sit there fully in his comfort zone, not like this.

"…Very well," Lysandre said, much of the confidence draining from his tone. Pleasing. "What brings you here, then?"

"Desire for an answer to my question, " Ghetsis responded, his grip tightening on his cane. "What have you done, Lysandre?"

"I could ask you the same thing. I had a plan for those men you froze."

"I had a plan for the entirety of Unova. I don't think you're in a position to quibble about casualties."

"…You know what I've done." Lysandre averted his eyes for the first time, and Ghetsis wondered why he bothered trying to hide his true feelings from him of all people.

"Then why am I still alive? And my pokémon. You detailed me the extent of your madness; I know they were to be victims as well."

Blue eyes narrowed a fraction in distaste. "A spanner in the works," Lysandre muttered, only to be prompted to elaborate by Ghetsis' pointed silence. "Yveltal was stolen briefly, and enough pressure was put on me to fire the weapon that I had to do so before it reached optimal charge."

"…So you intended to kill me. I don't recall joining your cult, after all." _It's not a cult_ burned on the tip of Lysandre's tongue, and Ghetsis could feel it.

"Don't you?"

Ghetsis paused. "No. I'd remember paying your entry fee."

"You joined when it was new, before I implemented that...deterrent." _Back when you humoured my ideas_. "I never intended to kill you, and the setbacks I suffered simply aided that."

"I'm disgusted that you went through with it, regardless," Ghetsis hissed – suddenly, the other man's fondness for him was a source of unrelenting anger. "Please. Tell me what it is you plan to do with these people, now that you've wiped out an indeterminate percentage of wildlife on the planet. Tell me what your master plan is, and I will leave you to it."

Silence.

Lysandre was struggling to form a response that Ghetsis would find adequate, and a sense of sadistic pleasure found its way through all the boiling anger. Ghetsis began to drum his fingers on the broad handle of his cane impatiently. "_Surely_ you didn't come all this way without a detailed plan for, say, reworking global infrastructure? Or did you just expect to just live in some wholly natural utopia?"

"_No_. I have plans for that. I would not have done this without extensive planning," Lysandre said a touch defensively, apparently happy not to specify what grand plans he expected to see through with his small group of wealthy fans. Ghetsis wondered what he'd do when he realised he'd irreversibly fucked up, as it were.

"Well isn't that wonderful," he responded, beginning to pity Lysandre. He turned, and started towards the door, "goodbye, monsieur. You've given me hope there may be something in my region left to conquer. You may call me back once the remorse sets in."

"You don't wish to join my utopia?" Lysandre asked, stopping Ghetsis in his tracks. An odd noise left him; something close to a swiftly stifled laugh.

"Apologies for my levity, monsieur. I just have this niggling doubt that even _you _will want to join your utopia before long," he said sincerely, lamenting the fact that Lysandre wouldn't take the words to heart as he left. He hadn't listened when Ghetsis had expressed doubts about this plan in the first place, and he'd had the utter lack of foresight not to come to his senses before executing it.

Lysandre wasn't the man he thought he was, and because of this, Ghetsis was forced to feel a sense of culpability for this outcome.

He could have stopped him.


End file.
